Video on Hackzine

Neat technique on soldering SMT components.

He's good, but I wouldn't say that's anything spectacular. We call the type of tip a "mini-wave". It has a concave side (that isn't shown in the video that I noticed).

A bit of practise and it's fairly easy to do. He doesn't really explain anything though.

1) Tack down the IC using the corner pins.
2) Apply some flux.
3) Use that technique.

I've never done it "vertically" but it works quite OK for me horizontally and I doubt it would make that much difference to be honest.

Same thoughts here. Although if you've never seen a SMD soldered then I guess it probably looks impressive!

Flux, flux and more flux!

I'm guessing that is leaded solder (which is considerably easier to solder with), the joints look awfully shiny. Lead free is a bitch.

I still think it's magical (if that's the right word) to see the solder disperse onto the pads like that.

I can certainly see how having the board at an angle would make it easier to work on. My back gives me terrible trouble if I spend too long soldering stuff flat on the table.

I've been looking at buying a new soldering station since my old one has all but given up the ghost. But I'm curious about lead-free versus normal soldering irons. I understand that lead-free solder melts at a higher temperature, so I can understand why a soldering iron without a temperature control could be intended for one use over another, but if a company's product line includes two temperature controlled irons that both have the same temperature range, but one is marketed as lead-free and the other one not, what is the difference?

We have had *massive* problems with lead free solder, basically the main one is that it doesn't want to solder!

The second problem is that the tips oxidize very easily. Using a watered sponge is now a serious "no no" as this causes the tips to oxidize almost immediately. Instead (as the solder company bloke told us in a meeting) it's back to the old days of re-tinning the tip every time the soldering iron leaves your hand.

We now use the wire wool bundle to clean tips, obviously this is pretty abrasive so needs to be avoided really, but the tips oxidize so bloody quickly that it's almost impossible to not use them.

We generally use JBC irons (the pencil style ones) and had to upgrade a number of stations so that we could get extra heat of out them.

We also are using a number of different solders, one of which uses wax instead of rosin and has a rather sickly chocolate smell when it melts, but nothing beats lead!

Come back lead, all is forgiven!